1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus and method for heating a recording medium.
2. Related Art
Ink jet printers perform recording on a recording sheet by means of aqueous ink. In such a case, when a user touches the ink with the user's fingers or the like before the ink is sufficiently dried, a recorded portion may be stained, by rubbing, with the ink, and when another recording sheet is stacked on the recorded recording sheet, the non-dried ink may undesirably adhere on the recording sheet. Particularly, in the case of a line head type ink jet printer, recording is performed on one sheet of recording sheet within about one second, for example. Therefore, when a recording sheet discharged with images recorded thereon is stacked in the stacker, a subsequent recording sheet may be stacked on the recording sheet before the ink is sufficiently dried. Thus, the ink of the lower recording sheet may undesirably adhere on the recording sheet stacked thereon.
To resolve such a problem, JP-A-2006-010889, for example, discloses means for irradiating microwaves to a recording sheet having ink images recorded thereon to heat the ink, thus decreasing the ink drying time.
However, in the case of the means disclosed in JP-A-2006-010889, an irradiation dose or an irradiation intensity of the microwaves is constant regardless of a dryness level of the applied ink. Therefore, when the amount of applied ink is small and the moisture level is low relative to the fixed irradiation dose or intensity of the irradiation dose, the recording sheet may be excessively heated and thus undesirably catch fire or be deteriorated with intense heat. To the contrary, when the amount of applied ink is small but the moisture level is high, the recording sheet might not be sufficiently dried.